Briese's Commitments of Traders

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Commitment of Traders data lets you keep tabs on the market interests of larger traders and hedgers, whose activities often influence future price performance. CSI offers Steve Briese's COT index, which is based on the CFTC's Commitment of Traders reports for 63 commodities. Our data set includes Steve Briese's index computations, as well as the CFTC's raw released information with, in some cases, adjustments for obvious errors in the CFTC' s report. These bi-weekly reports are available every Tuesday with any corrections for the earlier week and the new government computed statistics on alternating Tuesdays. The calculation for Briese's COT Index is proprietary.

If COT data is not available for the market you have charted, then this menu option will not display.

To add Briese's COT Index data as a study to any continuous price series (for which COT is available) simply make a chart of the underlying commodity, click "Indicator" button on the toolbar, and then click the [Add Study] button. Click the arrow next to "None" in the Select Study window and then select "Briese's COT Index" from the menu. If Briese's COT is not listed on the study menu, then no COT data exists for the selected market.

Alternately, pull down the Chart menu, click "Study Toolbar" and then select "Briese's COT Index.

While viewing a chart, numerical values for Briese's COT Index may be viewed by clicking the Tracker button on the toolbar as shown below. This is an example of a continuous price series with COT data added as a study.
 

Briese's COT Index Chart Interpretation

The light blue line represents the Large Speculators Index value (40).
The dark blue line represents the Commercials Hedger Index value (54).
The gray line represents the Small Trader Index value (69).

According to Steve Briese: "The value is high when commercial interests are large against small trader interests, and the value is low when commercial interests are short against small trader interests."

More COT

In addition to offering the Briese COT Index as a study within UA's charting package, CSI also offers both raw Commitments of Traders data and the Briese COT Index data as data series available in the CSI database. As such, these series can be added to any portfolio for charting, analysis and export to other applications. See Commitments of Traders Data in the Data Resources chapter for information on handling both COT data and Briese's COT Index data as individual data files. There you will also find information on the record layout of these series.

For more information on C.O.T. data and their use, you might want to subscribe to Steve Briese's Bullish Review (phone 888-423-4950). Every two weeks, Steve reports on dozens of government-regulated commodity markets. He supplies charts of market behavior, inclusive of his index, and commentary on future price performance prospects derived from the C.O.T. data.